Category Archives: Comic Books

17 years ago from the moment we saw him in that cage fight in Canada in the 2000 film X-Men all the way to this weekend’s release of Logan, Hugh Jackman spent the better part of the next 2 decades bringing Wolverine to life.

Before the films even launched the golden age of superhero movies, Wolverine was a well beloved character in the X-men comics as well as the 90s X-men animated series that still holds a special place in many 80s/90s kid’s hearts. Hugh Jackman just brought us a new standard to the character over the course of 9 movies. While Jackman had claimed a few times that he’d be retiring from portraying Wolverine only to pop up in another X-men film, there’s a good chance this is the last time we’ll see him pop on the claws (unless in his words he can play with the Avengers, which would be incredible but doubtful). Similarly this is very likely the last time we’ll see Sir Patrick Stewart in the role of Charles Xavier as well according to recent interviews. While we have James McAvoy portraying young professor X, it’s going to be hard to picture anyone else but Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. However the character is larger than any one actor so I think we’ll see Wolverine again possibly after letting a X-film cruise without him for a movie or two (Next X-Men movie is rumored to be Dark Phoenix and/or taking the mutants on a cosmic adventure) .

Captain America: Civil War has been a box office juggernaut since releasing 3 weeks ago and now that I’ve seen it, it’s time to talk about it. The movie takes its name from a 2006 Marvel Comics event in which a team of superheroes destroys a small town. A superhero registration act immediately passes in congress requiring all super-powered individuals to come forward, publicly revealing their identities and register as a super-powered individual and work for the government. The movie follows it somewhat but instead following the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Avengers are made to be held accountable for their actions since most of their identities are already known. Like the comic, those in favor join Iron Man and those opposed joined Captain America. Some fighting happens naturally. This in a nutshell is how the 3rd Captain America film gets rolling (or Avengers 2.5 as it really felt like). I couldn’t recommend the movie enough as a fan and since I’m still in crazy fanboy mode I wanted to talk about the 5 moments that made me lose my shit while watching! Spoilers obviously follow so if you haven’t seen it just come back and read after. (FULL ARTICLE)

Next weekend, a movie that seemed highly unlikely to ever happen will finally hit the big screen. Since Ryan Reynolds was announced to play Wade Wilson in Wolverine Origins, fanboys hoped for a spin-off featuring Deadpool. However the film’s confusing 3rd act gave us “Deadpool” (read my rant here) and killed nearly all hope for a spin-off. Fortunately, now that the Cinematic X-Men universe has been reset and everything we’ll finally get to see a proper Deadpool in his own movie.

Deadpool has been a beloved character since his debut in The New Mutants #98 back in 1991 and his solo/co-staring series throughout the 90s and 2000s and launched into mega-popularity over the last few years. If the trailers and awesome marketing for the movie wasn’t enough, some fans may want to know a little about Deadpool before he makes his (proper) silver screen debut.

Mostly, all you’ll need to know is that Wade Wilson is a skilled mercenary that gets cancer, he enters the Weapon X program (same program that made Wolverine) to cure it and instead he becomes indestructible like Wolverine and horribly disfigured. Throw in some insanity (or as the film will go to avoid a PC fight: dark sense of humor) and you more or less get a feel for who Deadpool is. With a little over a week to go, there’s plenty of time to get acquainted with the Merc with the Mouth via his numerous stories. Here’s 6 that I think would make for a great introduction to the character: (READ MORE)

A few weeks ago the Marvel multiverse came to an explosive end. It’s a bit sad and all but now there’s just Battleworld that remains. So long story short: Marvel has lots of universes but really the 2 that are most important is the main universe (called 1610) and the Ultimate Marvel Universe (which the movies borrow a few elements from and sorta was created to create new versions of heroes without decades of continuity getting in the way). Anyway all these universes are dying off due to incursion events and it seems that both the Ultimate Marvel Universe and the 1610 universe figured out how to prolong extinction which more or less involves destroying the other universe’s earth in order to save theirs from another colliding universe. It sorta works for a while until the 1610 universe collides with the Ultimate Universe and they just sorta fight it out and kill each other but then everything just sorta fades to white and now all that remains is a patchwork planet called Battleworld which is made up from all these collided universes. If you want to know the who, what, where and why there’s like 3 years of comics that you’d have to read. I’m not wanting to do that much homework but that appears to be the gist of what’s happening. Anyway the fun part about this is that everything ended and now a lot of alternate universe stories such as Marvel Zombies, X-men Days of Future Past, Old Man Logan, 1602, Ultimate Marvel and Regular Marvel universes are all co-existing in one place and it’s characters are fighting each other. When the dust settles, Marvel gets to basically reset a little bit and not have to worry about decades of storylines. Plus most likely they can reflect certain properties to better match their cinematic counterparts.

Make no mistake, this is totally a cash-grab but it’s a fun cash-grab and some former storylines are re-visited or rebooted. The only problem is that there’s a ton of tie-ins in addition to the main storyline but fortunately some of them are way too appealing to ignore and stick to the main story and just seems like fun all around. Anyway here’s the 10 things I’m most excited about with this event.

It has been less than 24 hours since Marvel announced that a deal was struck with Sony to bring Spider-man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Internet is still going crazy with the news! Prior to last night, Spider-man could not be used by Marvel Studios due to Marvel selling the movie rights of some of their more bankable properties to various companies long before they entered the motion picture game. This is why we haven’t seen Wolverine fight in the WWII trenches with Captain America, Reed Richards collaborating with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, The Human Torch and Spider-man hanging out or why Spider-man hasn’t joined the Avengers….Until now. Under the new agreement, Sony will retain the rights to Spider-man and still be able to release and distribute the Spider-man movies as well as having final creative control. However, now that Marvel can c0-produce future Spider-man films, Spider-man can show up on-screen with Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers and the Marvel studios characters can likewise show up in a Spider-man movie down the line. The announcement that came late last night did shake up the state of some upcoming films as some of Marvel’s previously announced Phase 3 films will now have new release dates and Andrew Garfield is reportedly out of the picture to reprise his role as the webslinger. Being a life-long Spider-man fan (I’m 30 and I gladly wear my symbiote hoodie to my corporate office job all the time and have a bin overflowing with Spider-man comics), I’m very excited with this news. Like most fanboys, I have a few hopes and desires of what hopefully comes next: (READ MORE)

Every year, the biggest pop culture event in the world San Diego Comic Con is ground zero for all things related to comics, TV and Movies. For fans of such things, this past weekend had many of us glued to the internet as the reports rolled in (one day, despite the complaints of crowding, I do want to visit it in person and do first-hand reports). With so much bombshells being dropped at the annual event, it’s easy for some stories to slip between the cracks. Here’s a rundown (broken down by topic so you can just read the stuff you care about) of what I considered to be the coolest news that broke at Comic Con over the weekend. Of course, usually the weeks following, some of those exclusive first looks start to surface online for those of us not able to attend in addition to further announcements of such projects. Anyway here’s the geeky rundown: (FULL STORY)

San Diego Comic-Con is officially upon us with tonight’s preview night. Although I have yet to make the geek pilgrimage to the event, I’ve been satisfied with Denver hosting their own comic convention, which in it’s 2nd year, has surpassed attendance of Wondercon and others to become the 4th biggest convention in North America. However, despite friends complaining that the event in San Diego has grown far too large and overcrowded, I still would like to journey there someday to knock it off the bucket list. Regardless, this time each year I become extremely excited as I glue myself to the internet reports of all the announcements, movie trailers, and tidbits that come pouring in from San Diego (It’s like how my sport fan friends stay glued to the internet/TV during the NFL Draft). Basically movie studios, publishers and creators wait until this event to reveal all their secret announcements. With the convention a couple hours away from kicking off, we’ve already had some pretty fun news so far ahead of the convention. Here’s what’s getting me pumped already: (FULL STORY)

This week it was announced that a movie based on the comic book series Fables will happen. Being a fan of the series, I’m pretty excited. With an upcoming videogame in development by Telltale games, there’s a good chance that Fables can create a following beyond comic readers before the movie releases and therefore finding an audience. Fables has definitely made a splash in the comic book world by winning 14 Eisner Awards, so by all means, it’s getting some very well deserved attention. However, despite my excitement, I can see some issues that a movie may present.

There’s a saying that goes “All good things must come to an end” and Denver Comic-Con is no exception. Today marks the third and final day of Denver Comic-Con. This morning we decided to wear our Dharma Initiative jumpsuits and therefore creating a personal Denver Comic-Con tradition as we did the same thing last year. We arrived to another big line, but due to the snaking line, it didn’t seem like we were so far back being an hour ½ early. Due to yesterday’s line stretching pretty far with our early arrival for Takei wristbands, we decided to arrive early anyway regardless of if we’d luck out on getting a wristband to see William Shatner’s panel or not.

The line seemed more fun today with less bitching about the wait and more fun costumes and photo taking. We stood next to a family of hobbits with cardboard ears and then saw a Gandalf arrive. I know a wizard is never late, but he really was late with not being near us yesterday when we were decked out in Hobbit outfits. Also in the line, we saw some teenagers dressed as Dean Winchester and Castiel from Supernatural, a King Arthur from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, New Avengers Loki, and an adult Jayne from Firefly posing in a picture of a kid as Jayne too. I also nearly got in a embarrassing situation while doing a “I don’t get it rant” about “Bronies” (aka guys that freaking *LOVE* My Little Pony), which has gained some attention in the last year, but little did I know that a few feet behind me was “Mega-Bronie Prime” who was decked out in lots of My Little Pony stuff. Oops! When the line began to shift inside, we were lucky again and were able to score a wristband to see William Shatner’s panel later in the day.

Another day of Denver Comic-Con has come and passed as Day 2 of the 3 day event comes to a close. Today, there were many more cosplayers due to the costume shindig at the end of the day. My wife and I came dressed as filthy Hobbitsis and got a fair number of photos taken. This year a goofy wig (a Jackie Moon from Semi-Pro wig re-purposed as Hobbit hair) and Hobbit feet slippers were much easier to manage than my blue Nightcrawler makeup from last year (Immensely popular, but the itchiness and constant re-applying was enough to not want to reprise it this year). Hilariously enough, everyone knew to say “Hobbitsis” like Gollum does and I got not one but two compliments on my walking stick. Sidenote: the walking stick was a result of an afternoon of walking along Cherry Creek’s creek-bed and finding “the perfect stick”, so I was pleased to get validation on my stick finding skills.